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Every film lover must go through various evolutionary stages. Here are the six stages, along with descriptions:

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Editors Note: Big-time credit for this has to go to the excellent Beer & Whiskey Brothers, who tackled this back in December with their very own Evolution of the Beer Geek and approved the parallel concept.

Thanks! I can’t stress enough, though- the idea is straight out of the Beer and Whiskey Brothers. Those guys deserve like 90% of the original content credit. All I did was tweak it until it went from beer to movies.

This is so true, I feel like it was based on my experiences with cinema. Even most of the examples used have been my favourite films at some point. I can even place myself now (somewhere between Oscaria Subtitlis and Filmsnobicus Hipsterata). Great feature!

That’s great to hear. As I was putting it together, I tried to think back through my own experiences. And I’d say that depending on what day you talk to me, I’m one of the last three. I have to fight hard to not be Filmsnobicus.

Brilliant stuff. Way to make the beer to movie transition. I’m not sure where I fall on the evolutionary ladder. I thought I made it up to Celluloid Sapien, but I may have come full circle and gone back to the beginning since most of my film watching involves family friendly fare.

Oh yes… my boys are Pixar and better Dreamworks fans. If I do my job correctly, they will be film, food, craft beer, and whisky snobs like their Dear Old Papa.

And FYI … you haven’t lived till you hear a 3 year old do a Sam Jackson as Frozone imitation. “Honeyyyyyy! Wherrrrrre’s my supersuit? Wherrrrrre’s my SUPERRRRRRSUIT!”. I need to get this on YouTube. :)

Man oh man, your brilliance never ceases to amaze me John. Now this is the evolution I can believe in. I think I’m still at Blockbustericus, ahah, though having a non-native English speaker, I’m a pro at reading subtitles :D

Loved it. You nailed it. The worst is when your friends are not at the same level as you. Picking movies is impossible with anyone in another group! This might be my favorite post since the one that got me coming here. (Except maybe 11 Other Things Natalie Portman Didn’t Do, which rates for its title alone!)

I think I’m Oscaria bordering on Filmsnobicus, but curiously, the three film suggestions you made for Sundancicus are all among my favourite movies… I’m worried. But over the last few months I’ve really jumped the gap into foreign cinema… a huge jump. I mean, I’ve jumped from Y Tu Mama Tambien to Idi i Smotri to Det Sjunde Inseg…. The Seventh Seal.

I’m too old to have ever been in that first stage (can you imagine life before home video, kids?), so my development was later and faster. However, living in a college town, there is a constant parade of Filmsnobicus hipsterataeto remind me that even with all the film in the world at your fingertips, some people take a while to get up the long ladder.

Fun list but I just can’t help myself from nitpicking: I think a more accurate title for the third category would be IMDBus Fanboyata: the stage where one has started to seriously get into film but limits their viewing selection to the IMDB top 250. This stage is marked by an unwillingness to go against popular opinion (“It’s only 65 percent on Rotten Tomatoes so it’s got to be mediocre!”) and a new-found enthusiasm for foreign films…so long as they’re called Pan’s Labyrinth, Cinema Paradiso or Amelie. This stage is also distinguished by a cult-like adherence to a figure known as “Christopher Nolan”.
And why is Aguirre is primary pick of Filmsnobicus? Most film hipsters I know care little for Herzog and are much more inclined to choose something like El Topo or a particularly obscure Guy Maddin flick. Or maybe I’m just sensitive because its one of my favorite films…

I’ve ALWAYS been a celluloid sapien. I absolutely despise film snobs/buffs. I’ve always had the ability to enjoy the most ridiculous b-movie to the most pretentious oscar-bait to the too-clever-by-half indie flick to the brain-dead action blockbuster (really enjoyed Fast Five except for that ridiculous bridge sequence at the end).

I refuse to discuss movies with pseudo-intellectual jack-holes who only want to make themselves seem more intelligent than you are.

Just because someone doesn’t like every type of movie doesn’t mean they’re trying to seem more intelligent than those who do, for instance, I honestly find live-action action movies to be rather boring, mostly, but I certainly don’t think that means I’m either more or less intelligent than someone else who loves that type of film, it just means we have different tastes (at least in that respect, there may well be other film genres/specific films that we both enjoy or do not), I don’t think someone has to prove that they’re not a snob by forcing themselves to enjoy films that they don’t, anymore than someone should have to prove that they’re intelligent by liking a certain type of film. I’ve met people who fall into the snob category, there’s this guy who once talked at me for hours about how much better Nosferatu is than Godzilla (the original Japanese one), and how I must see lots of Akira Kurosawa films (which I totally want to anyway, but the proselytising was rather offputting) and how Speed was a shit movie (which I do think is a good action movie), and then there was the time when they borrowed Where the Wild Things Are (the Spike Jonze one) from me and announced that it was rubbish after they skimmed it, yeah, that’s right, they didn’t even bother to watch the whole thing, I hadn’t even seen the movie before they borrowed it and I ended up rather liking it when I did get around to it, but the point is that this person was a git, even if I’d had the exact same favourite movies as them I still would have found it insufferable talking to them about films because they’re just trying to convince you that they know best, rather than share love of film, myself I’m very much an animation fan, not just family movies, but all sorts of stuff from any country, and I like to watch things in their original language, with English subtitles if that language is not English, I’m actually automatically a little less interested in a film/TV show if it’s not animated (not while I’m actually watching it, but if I’m looking up information about it), but I fully recognise that this is my own personal quirk and not some objective truth about which films/TV shows are the best films/TV shows (I don’t think there is such a thing as an objectively good or bad film/TV show/other moving image media work). I know all sorts of obscure films and TV shows from my favourite medium and will talk about them to anyone who will listen, but I’m not trying to seem smarter than them, I just want to talk to someone about what I love, hear what they love and hopefully introduce each other to something new and wonderful or even a valuable new perspective on something already viewed.

You got a lot off of your chest. Speaking for myself, I think one of the toughest things for me is to not judge movies without a little context. Your Godzilla example… the original Godzilla (Gojira… sorry, that’s Filmsnobicus coming out) was a really great and really influential movie. It came at a really good time, too, as Universal’s horror brilliance had petered out into a ton of bad (but fun) sequels of their monster classics.

Ha… I guess in a way, Godzilla was the Scream of its day. It rejuvenated a dying franchise.

Just in case there was any confusion, I haven’t seen Nosferatu (do plan to at some point) and I really liked Gojira (I was aware of the film’s original title previously, I just put the English one because that way more people would know what I meant, I’d actually like to know if the English title actually bears any relation to the original or if it just kinda sounds like it, I’ve never heard a Japanese word for god that sounded like the English one, just kami, usually with a sama suffix, was the film called Godzilla originally but transliterated into kanji, or did they just think that would be a good English title?) The guy I was talking to said that he thought it was “naive”, but I think it has some really powerful stuff, like the bit where the fish die and one of the main characters starts crying, and I like the earnestness of the whole thing.

An oddly consumptive model of film appreciation based on a model of beer evolution founded in literal consumption, I wonder about the stage of evolution in which movie geekdom becomes self-aware and outwardly expansive. In other words, this gag is embarrassingly superficial. The trajectory is so obvious that any intelligent person should be able to skip a few levels, know what I mean, or perhaps an early encounter with an ‘advanced’ film might motivate a shortcut through the consumptive drudgery of this enterprise. I can practically see the stacks of dvds in the rooms of the people who connect with this, and I can practically hear them explaining the relationship between their collection and their film appreciation. To me this represent a horrible, shallow, short-sighted type of film love.

This is just hilarious and you are a very intelligent being. I love cinema and I can honestly vouch for the fact that I evolved exactly as mentioned in your essay down to the very movies!!!
The Lion King was my favorite as an 8 eight year old and then it as Jurassic Park and then train spotting(It helped that I wanted to be a real druggie much like others wanted to be lawyers and doctors). Today I have mellowed and yet I spend most of my time deriding the mainstream crowd on imdb.

Oh, and you should thank imdb for introducing you to other cine-tragics

I definitely tried to look at it from my own personal evolution, which I think is fairly typical.

As for thanking IMDB, I’m so very grateful to them for the times I’ve been Hit Listed. The traffic I receive here would be considerably less without the Hit List. I averaged it out at one point and it amounted to 55% of my traffic, all-time, coming from the 12 times I’ve been on there.

Wow! I’m currently going through this evolutionary process right now. I started at twilight and now i can’t get enough Fight Club, Memento, 2001: A Space Odyssey. My next stop is Requiem for a Dream :)

Ok, I tried resisting but I’m too much of a nitpicker…
It should be Familymovius cartoonata, without a capital for the second part (Genus species), and it’s Celluloid sapiens, with an “s”…
That said, I really enjoyed the post :-)

The author’s conception of independent films seems stunningly limited. Also, does he realize he’s saying that real cineastes are devoid of memory spans and think that a terrible movie is their favorite if they’re watching it right now?

I am not sure where I am on the list. I recognize that indies would be indies, blockbusters would be blockbusters, and classics would be classics. So I might be the last stage. However, I a still very young and still seeking knowledge. There are many classics I have not yet seen. And I will still say Twilight sucks, no matter what.

Hello there! I realy like this! and I understand that I am not far gone in the evolution ;) my little, tiny, tiny blog (ore more like a diary) just talks about animated films and series. I try to se those lifelessons they are filled with. But not all god/bad ;) a little bit deeper and with a humorous and ironic touch. Your blog is realy inspiring to me.
I realise I have some following up to do and you will doubtless be my english teacher from now on :)..as I’m from sweden :D thank you for all fun reading!